Let’s start off with a truth few of us consider, even if we are doing it on a daily basis: we are all sending data to the cloud. Of course, most times we forget and take for granted the fact that we don’t need to send the same piece of information in turn, to each of our contacts anymore, the fact that we are uploading photos to Facebook both to show our friends and to keep them safe (in the unfortunate case of a virus or hard-drive failure) and all the benefits this technology has. Let’s try to remember how it was just a couple of years ago: for example, if you wanted to share a couple of photos, you had to send countless emails with attachments (which were almost always left unopened) – now there’s Picasa. In addition to the hassle this implied, the main drawbacks of sending countless emails with large attachments is an inevitable increase in the PST file size and bandwidth usage and a decrease in Outlook’s performance.

This begs the question: why are you still using this “carrier pigeon” approach to sending out emails with attachments? 🙂

In addition to compressing your PST file, moving attachments to disk, deleting duplicates and many more, our newest add-in, Weight Diet for Outlook, comes with the very useful feature of sending your email attachments to RapidShare before the actual message leaves Outlook. Thus, by uploading, your recipients receive a link and can download the attachment easily form the cloud, anywhere, no matter if they’re viewing your email on their mobile devices or their PCs. You will no longer need to keep that email attachment safe on your hard-drive for future sending (since you can always download it), your PST file size will be kept at a minimum and your messages will go out at a much, much faster rate. This is especially important for larger companies, where computers and hard-drive space aren’t updated that often and bandwidth is sometimes very limited. What applies to all of us is the fact that, because Weight Diet uploads the attachment before sending the email, the message will only contain a link (and not the file), so its footprint will be significantly decreased (on both your computer and your recipient’s one) – it’s a well-known fact that the PST file size directly impacts Outlook’s usability and speed. [source1][source2][source3]

Have you ever received a complaint from someone stating that you didn’t add a particular attachment, only to find out that type of file is restricted on their network? Some businesses actually restrict all types of email attachments, so by automatically uploading it to an external service you not only lighten the burden on your server but alleviate any future complaints.

Also, most email providers impose limits to the attachment’s size. Be it 5 Mb, 20 Mb and so on, you surely encountered situations where your files surpassed it and you needed to take time to either archive the file or to upload it to a FTP or a cloud storage provider. With Weight Diet you can add attachments as large as you like automatically and never-again waste precious minutes before sending that important email. Also, our add-in for Outlook works with free Rapid Share accounts as well, so you don’t have to worry about paying anything else.

Weight Diet also allows you to define a minimum size for your uploaded files, so you can better manage all your email sending needs (the files that are smaller will be sent out normally – e.g. your signature image will be left intact).

Also, we are continually searching for new and exciting features to add to Weight Diet, so if you think of anything just drop us a line at the email address provided below.

So, if you are sending emails with attached documents to your mobile phone, photos as countless archives to friends, if you are a developer and continually send and receive executable files, if you are working in an environment which limits your email attachments’ size and type, if Outlook bogs down and refuses to work because of the size of your PST file and so on… why not give Weight Diet a try? You can download the trial version from here or just purchase a full, lifetime license here for only $29.95, which will give you access to all of its advanced, performance-oriented features.

The subject line in an email, almost as much as the from line, is one of the most important deal-breakers for your readers. That’s why this week we looked at how different email clients (on all platforms we could get our hands on) dealt with them… So, continue reading and see for yourself how many characters your subject line should have! Read more: The maximum displayed length of the email subject line | 1 Comment

In last week’s article, we hoped to convince you that the from line is at least as important as the subject line in all your email communications. Now, to help you out, we tested different platforms and came up with the following “cheat-sheet”, detailing the maximum displayed length of the from line on different browsers, phones and desktop applications! Read more: The maximum displayed length of the email from line | 2 Comments